


Bad Ideas are Just a Point of View

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: First Age, Forgiveness, Gen, Second Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 13:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Gil-Galad and Elrond take turns talking each other out of things.Elrond is considerably better at it.





	Bad Ideas are Just a Point of View

**Author's Note:**

> Fanningandcats wanted "being the designated sane one" with Gil-Galad and Elrond.
> 
> I still don't own the Silmarillion.

Everyone else had left the command tent to pursue either sleep or other duties. Only Gil-Galad and Elrond remained. Gil-Galad because he couldn’t quite tear himself away from glaring at the map quite yet, Elrond … Come to think of it, Elrond was probably there to pointedly remind Gil-Galad that he was still glaring at the map. Elrond had taken to doing things like that more and more lately, and Gil-Galad had yet to find a polite way of telling him he got enough worried frowns from Círdan without Elrond joining in.

Possibly it was proving so difficult because Elrond was just so helpful and efficient about it that it was hard for Gil-Galad to entirely convince himself that he actually wanted him to stop, no matter how snappish it still made him. It helped, too, that Elrond was younger than him; he didn’t feel as if he was trying to be made a child again, only a gentle, persistent concern.

A cup of water was placed at his right hand without Elrond giving him a chance to refuse it. He drank it without thinking and only then turned his glare on Elrond. “I’m fine.”

“Hmm?” Elrond looked up innocently from the papers he was pretending to examine. “Of course you are. Who’s said otherwise?”

Gil-Galad snorted and turned back to the map before silently admitting to himself that he was being unfair. He couldn’t keep snapping at Elrond for the crime of being helpful. It was just …

He traced a line on the map, darting it between the little markers representing armies. It was deceptively easy.

“Sometimes I just want to ride out and end this,” he muttered. “No more petty fighting for every inch of ground. Just one simple charge, like Fingolfin and Finrod.”

When he looked up, Elrond had gone very, very still. “That didn’t work out so well when they tried it,” he said carefully.

“No,” Gil-Galad conceded with a sigh, locking painful childhood memories away. “But it’s tempting, nonetheless.”

“More tempting than actually living to see the Long Defeat at last defeated in turn? More tempting than learning what it is to live in peace? More tempting than staying with what remains of your family? That’s not you talking, Gil-Galad, it’s - “ Elrond suddenly checked his passion and returned to himself. “It’s the Enemy,” he said quietly. “It’s always the Enemy. There’s a better way, my king. You know that.”

“I think it is just my own impatience, actually,” he admitted with a rueful smile. “Though perhaps there is a hint of his despair in it too. I will guard against it better, I promise you.”

Elrond seemed much relieved, even as he flinched a little at the last words.

Gil-Galad couldn’t help but wonder if _the Enemy_ was what Elrond had at first intended to say.

 

“No,” Gil-Galad said immediately upon walking into his infirmary to see what had so occupied his herald’s time of late. “Absolutely not.”

The feverish mutterings from the kinslayer on the bed continued uninterrupted. The healer beside him, however, looks up with wide, pleading eyes. “Gil-Galad - “

“No. He’s not some beaten dog trained to fight that you can coax into recovery and better behavior, Elrond! He’s one of the most dangerous elves yet living, and Valar know he’s shown little inclination to restrain himself!”

Elrond looked down at the fevered figure on the bed, currently calling out for his parents in frightened Quenya.

Gil-Galad stubbornly did not do likewise. “Even if he’s not dangerous _at the moment,”_ he conceded through gritted teeth, “the whole point of this exercise you’ve undertaken is to make him _better_ as I understand it, at which point he will be dangerous again. Unless this is actually some slow poisoning campaign I’m unaware of?” He wasn’t sure how he’d feel about it if it was. On the one hand, Elrond was certainly entitled to justice.

On the other hand, Elrond was also often responsible for Gil-Galad’s own healing, and no matter how much he trusted his cousin, knowing him to have an inclination to poison would make that a rather more awkward experience.

But of course not. Elrond’s eyes were flashing with outraged feeling, and Gil-Galad bit back a sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You have to see my concern.”

“I have the matter well in hand,” Elrond said coldly. “And why should he prove a danger here? They only ever fought their kin in pursuit of one goal, and sacking Lindon will not help him with it.”

“Hurting you might.”

“How? Who would carry the message to my father? How would my father pay the ransom without breaking the Valar’s ban?”

“Just because you’ve convinced yourself of that - “

“He’s convinced _himself_ of that,” Elrond said in a rare interruption. “And as long as he sees a way around the Oath, he will not act on it, even if he were in any condition to do so.”

He wanted to shake his cousin. “Surely you can see how unhealthy this is.”

“His wounds? Of course.”

“Your attachment. You know what he did.”

“Better than you do.”

Gil-Galad struggled to find the words to express what was boiling up within him, but rage would not serve him now. Reason might. “When you first came back to us,” he began slowly, “you know what I feared you might have endured. Deprivation. Cruel hurt. And I was relieved to find that you had not, or at least none deliberate and none that the rest of us had not in those last terrible days.”

Elrond nodded stiffly.

“But it became increasingly clear that you still bore things that you ought not to have been asked to bear. When you came to us, you were intimately familiar with how to share burdens and ease hurt. How to soothe pain of every description and ward off ensnarements of the mind. You helped them stay sane.”

Elrond didn’t deny it.

“You were a child,” Gil-Galad reminded him. “That should never have been your job.”

“There are a lot of things that should never have been,” Elrond said with sudden weariness. “What of it? They did not thrust us into the role if that is what you think. We wanted to help, and none of us would have been served by them falling further. _No,_ it was not right. Leaving us alone in a burning city would not have been right. Not attacking the city _would_ have been right, but with their Oath so strong upon them, I do not know how much longer that would have even been possible. There is much in this Marred world that is not right. Forgiveness is not part of that Marring; nor is loving kinsmen, no matter how distant or how formerly estranged. Nor is healing those in need.”

“Without the Marring, would we need forgiveness?” It was an academic question, a concession, and he knew it.

“Perhaps not,” Elrond conceded in turn. “But it is a beautiful thing, is it not? Like the snow, the ice, and the rain, born into being by themes Morgoth thought were his own.”

Gil-Galad gave in at last. “He leaves when he’s better,” he ordered. “Keep his presence quiet until then.”

“Of course,” Elrond said, now with a pleased smile. “Thank you. Truly.”

Gil-Galad just shook his head.


End file.
